Pippi Longstocking partners with Save the Children to help ‘Pippis of Today’
Melanie May | 15 January 2020 | News
The Astrid Lindgren Company and Save the Children have come together to launch a global campaign aimed at creating awareness and raising money for Save the Children’s work with today’s Pippi Longstockings.
“Pippi of Today”, a collaboration between The Astrid Lindgren Company and Save the Children, will support the charity’s work with children on the move. 75 years ago, the world’s strongest girl, Pippi Longstocking, came to a new town on her own, and the number of girls on the move now is at the highest it has been since the end of the Second World War. 2018 saw more than 70 million people on the move and over half of them were children.
The campaign will tell the stories of 13 refugee girls over the course of the 75th anniversary year, holding Pippi up as a role model for strength, courage and hope in adversity. To shed light on their experiences, the Astrid Lindgren Company interviewed the girls on their experiences, what their lives are like now, and what they hope to achieve in the future.
One of the girls is ‘Claudia’, a 12-year-old who lives without her mother. Claudia is one of millions of people who have come from Venezuela to Colombia, where she and her little sister were separated from their mother as they could not find anywhere for the whole family to live together.
[youtube height=”450″width=”800″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1y8MktzCC4&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
Some of the world’s largest global companies, including Amazon, Hachette, Universal Music and Oxford University Press, are coming together to support the international “Pippi of Today” campaign, which will take place in the Nordics, USA, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, and Switzerland, among other places. Through limited-edition merchandise, events, and other initiatives, the money raised in the campaign will contribute to the work of Save the Children and support girls on the move.
The campaign is a continued legacy of Astrid Lindgren and Save the Children’s work together. Lindgren was a life-long campaigner for children’s rights, working with Save the Children in the 1970s to successfully change Swedish law on corporal punishment, and advocating for children’s voices to be heard.
Olle Nyman, CEO at Astrid Lindgren Company and Astrid Lindgren’s grandson, said:
“In a world with ever stronger currents of nationalism and xenophobia, we want to highlight our shared responsibility for all children in demonstrating their strength and potential. With the help of Pippi, we want to support the girls who need it most, while also making their voices heard. Save the Children’s activities aim to support them, while Pippi serves as an inspiring role model that gives them strength and hope.”
Inger Ashing, CEO at Save the Children International, said:
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“Children’s rights know no borders. All children should have the same rights, no matter who they are or where they live. Save the Children is excited to partner with the Astrid Lindgren Company to help expand our work for girls on the move. In 2019, we interviewed girls from around the world who are on the move to better understand their experiences and how we can best reach them with the right efforts. But we still lack sufficient data and knowledge in this area. With the funds raised, we will be able to help fill these knowledge gaps and expand our work, so that every girl survives, learns and is protected.”
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.